If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now
by The Great Allie
Summary: Pete White left Billy in the desert, and it was the biggest mistake of his life. He can't take it back, and he can't ever make up for it.


The biggest mistake Peter White ever made was driving away that night. He never should have left Billy alone, wrapped in rags to stop the bleeding, in the middle of the desert where coyotes could get him, where he could die from exposure if he didn't find a place to stay soon. He never should have driven away on the moped, leaving the kid alone. He never should have taken him to that underground dog fight. He never should have taken him to any underground quiz show. He never should have gotten Billy involved in that cheating scandal.

Okay, so he made a lot of mistakes. This was all one single ball of mistakes, and it was the biggest one he'd ever dealt with. He kept on driving, kept on thinking he should turn back, until finally he did. In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, he swung the moped around and went back for Billy. Pete just couldn't leave the poor kid to fend for himself. He had nowhere to go and no one there waiting for him. No one even knew he was out there.

Pete kept driving, kept going over and over in his head what he would say when he found Billy. He really didn't know what one said in a situation like this. Apologize, probably. Maybe Billy wouldn't want to hear it, but then again maybe an hour or two alone in the desert would make him ready to at least listen to an apology. At least when he realized he had no one else, then maybe he would give Pete a chance to make it right.

But none of his apologies sounded right. Hey, fella, sorry I got your hand ripped off? Sorry I blew all our money gambling and got you disqualified? Those weren't apologies, those were red flags that the person you were talking to should never be let near you again.

And had he really dropped Billy off this far back? Pete had passed that billboard ages ago. It had a hokey feel to it, showing a happy family in a car near a new-looking house with the slogan, "If you lived here... you'd be home by now!" Now he was coming up on the Venture compound. Billy couldn't possibly have walked this far in that amount of time, could he? No way. His legs were so short. And he was down about a pint of blood...

Maybe I missed him, Pete told himself. He turned around and rode again, until he hit the billboard where he had last seen him. The billboard where he abandoned him.

Pete switched off the moped.

He couldn't have gone out into the desert, could he? No way. The kid was smart. He would stick to the road until he found civilization. Could someone else have picked him up? But then wouldn't Pete have seen another car? The thought occurred to Pete that the coyotes might really have gotten Billy, but that thought was quickly squashed. No way. There would have been signs left behind. Wouldn't there?

Pete stayed there for hours. He couldn't think of which way he should go. He couldn't just leave here without knowing what happened to Billy, but there seemed to be no way to find out.

Finally, the sun started peeking over the horizon, and Pete had to get inside or get some sun block. Without melanin, he was extremely vulnerable to sun damage as he had no natural protection. Reluctantly, he finally started up the moped and headed to civilization.

* * *

Pete had made one more mistake to add to the gigantic wad of Billy-related mistakes of the past few weeks. He had lied about the money. He hadn't lost all of it. There was still a small bit left over from his savings he hadn't squandered. Which he was able to hold onto because he had been using Billy as his meal ticket in the underground quiz circuit.

Someone on the outskirts of town had an old, run-down mobile home with a FOR SALE sign. That was where Pete decided to stay. It was somewhere, and it was shelter, and at the moment that was all he needed. He handed over cash and let himself inside.

The trailer was small and dirty. The wood paneling and green plaid were quintessential of the previous decade and, based on the smell, hadn't been cleaned once. Pete closed the blinds and slept that day on the couch. By the time he woke up, it was dark again.

He didn't even think about it. Pete got up, went out to the moped, and rode it back out to the desert. Nothing had changed and no one was there. No signs that anyone had been by. No lost little boy looking for the friend who let him down.

Pete stopped at the billboard, and stayed there. Again.

It was well past sunrise when he finally went back to the trailer.

The mobile trailer may not have been cleaned, but it had certainly been used. When Pete came home the next time he got a good look at what was in the trailer. Old snack wrappings. Crumpled up receipts. Discarded paper towels. Yellowed newspaper pages.

Someone had left a recent issue of Person Weekly. Not _the_ most recent one, but pretty recent. Pete was reaching in the cabinets to see what had been left behind when he found Billy's face staring back at him. It took him a moment, he was so caught off guard. At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him after letting them cook in the sun like he did. But no. It was the issue of Person Weekly with Billy's picture thrown up on the cover under the word CHEATER.

Pete held that magazine in his hand for a long time. When he finally put it down, it was dark out.

* * *

Pete took the moped back out to the billboard where he last saw Billy.

Eventually, Pete moved the trailer there. It made more sense than coming back, and he just couldn't leave. He kept thinking that if he waited there, just waited there, then maybe it would all work itself out. Maybe he thought that he would be there to catch himself when he went by, warn himself not to make the same mistake.

Maybe Billy would come back.

Maybe he never would have cheated back at the studio.

Maybe he never would have never ruined the kid's life.

Eventually he didn't bother only coming out at night. If Billy was going to come back, it would be in the daytime, wouldn't it? He wouldn't know it was Pete's trailer, and _his_ trailer, too, if Pete wasn't out front, right?

Pete kept looking in that damn magazine. Billy's picture looked back at him with two working eyes, neither of them asking him _why did you leave me_?

* * *

Eventually, someone came.

By this time Pete was ragged, sunburnt, unwashed, unshaved, and altogether pathetic-looking. When he heard the car, he looked up from the magazine, shielding the glare out of his eyes with his hand. He didn't recognize the car, and he didn't recognize the tank that got out of it (though later he would realize that they had met before, briefly.) The visitor pulled out a duffle bag. Pete slowly stood up and approached.

"I've been told you lost something," said the visitor, putting the duffle bag down at his feet.

Pete looked down. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"He can never know what happened to him." This preceded an explanation, about how Billy had been picked up by... _someone,_ sent... _someplace_ , and been through Hell before having his memory erased.

"So what is the last thing he remembers?" Pete asked.

"Don't know. Probably not the last few weeks, the whole thing is still experimental. Don't worry, you'll figure it out. I've gotta go, but if anything changes, there's a number in the bag. You call it and bring him to us, you got that?"

"Yeah... yeah, I got it."

"Great. Later." And with that, he got back in the car and was gone.

Pete knelt down on the ground and opened the duffle bag. Inside it was Billy, and he was sleeping peacefully. Pete held him close as he thanked God or any other external force that they were back together. He looked over the injuries he'd seen Billy with last. His eye was patched, and he had a mechanical hand in place of the one that was torn off. Someone had put him back together.

Now Pete had to pull himself together, as well.

* * *

Billy didn't wake up until that night. The trailer had a bed, though Pete had been crashing on the couch instead. It was only a few feet further, but it was a few feet he just couldn't manage. Now, though, Pete carefully put Billy on the bed, on his back like Snow White in her glass coffin. Billy rolled over onto his side and hunched over on his own.

Pete waited there for hours. The blinds were all drawn, but the room still grew progressively darker as the sun went behind the horizon. Finally, after an eternity, Billy stirred.

Pete smiled. "Hey, pally. Feel like waking up yet?"

Billy rubbed his eye with his real hand. "Hm?" It was more of a sleepy grunt than anything.

"How ya feeling?"

Billy slowly sat up. "Where are we?"

"What, you don't remember?" This was a test, a planned segue into seeing how much he had to apologize for.

"...no? Uh... did I miss the show?" He glanced at the window. Even with the shades down, it wasn't exactly difficult to tell it was night out. "What time is it?"

"About nine-thirty," said Pete. "Look... uh, Billy... there kinda isn't going to be a show anymore."

"What? What happened?" Billy reached up to his face, suddenly realizing he wasn't seeing right. When he did, he saw his hand. "White? ... What happened to me?" He didn't seem to be freaking out. It was almost like he _expected_ himself to be this way, even if he didn't remember why.

"I don't exactly know," said Pete, as truthfully as he could. "See, uh... we got separated for a while. There was some problem going on with the network execs, and... uh, they pulled the plug. The money's gone. I don't know where you went after that. They brought you back to me like this just a few hours ago."

"Who's 'they'?"

"I don't know that, either."

Billy continued staring at his hand. "So the money's gone? Then what about MIT?"

"We'll figure something out," said Pete. "With your brains? You'll probably get a free ride to any school you want."

Billy looked up at Pete, for the first time giving him a good look. Pete had combed his hair and put on a pair of sweatpants, but nothing could be done to pretty up the awful sunburns covering his skin. "What happened to _you_?"

"Don't worry about it," said Pete.

"But what's gonna happen now?"

"Well, for now, we can stay right here until we figure everything out. I've got this nice trailer, a little small, but it'll fit us both. It's a place to stay, isn't it?"

"I guess..."

"You should just relax for now. You look like you've been through a lot."

"Yeah, you, too," said Billy. "You look like you haven't slept since..." but here his memory got fuzzy and he didn't know how to finish.

If he had said, "since you left me in the desert," it would have been heartbreaking, but almost completely true.

* * *

19 YEARS LATER

Pete was shoving everything he could into his suitcase. He only had one, but then, he didn't have a lot to pack. Just his clothes, really. Maybe the XBox. Not the 360, he was just going to take a few old games. Other than that, everything else was going to stay in the trailer.

Pressing down on the suitcase with all of his weight, Pete glanced around the trailer to see if he had left anything important behind. If he did, too bad. He had to get out before-

"White?"

Before that happened.

Pete turned his head and saw Billy standing in the doorway of the trailer, looking at him with a stern air that Pete couldn't quite decode. Not the rage he expected him to feel, but definitely not pleased.

"Uh... yeah?"

"You left me at Venture's," said Billy.

"Well... yeah."

"What the hell? You club me on the head twice with a PlayStation and don't even stick around to see how I am?"

Pete turned his attention back to his suitcase as he forced the latch shut. "I know how you are. I saw you try to take a chunk out of Brock's neck."

"Yeah." Billy rubbed his head. "So what. You're just going to leave?"

"Of course." He gestured over to the row of cabinets on the trailer wall. "All the important papers are in... in, uh..."

"Third drawer from the left, bottom row," said Billy. "You don't need to tell _me_ , I'm the only one who knows how to find anything in this dump."

"Well, good, because they're yours now."

"What?"

"The trailer," said Pete. "The trailer's yours. I know it doesn't even come close to making up for it, but I don't want you to be high and dry without a place to stay, so..."

"Oh. How generous. Offering me my own home as a place to stay, that's wonderful of you."

"Well, it doesn't seem right that you're the one who leaves, seeing as how none of this is your fault."

"But why does _either_ of us have to go?"

"Well, because-" Pete stopped. He didn't really expect he would have to explain this to Billy. He thought Billy would be the one leading this conversation. Why wasn't he on board with this? "Because..."

"... Because?"

"Because I ruined your life! Because after this, you never want to see me again! Because the sooner I get out of your life the sooner you can work on getting it back on track."

The air hung thickly between them as they both stared at each other, stony faced, each one waiting for the other to make a move.

Finally, Pete sank down onto the couch and buried his face in his hands. "I've been dragging you down for almost twenty years," he murmured. "I was gonna leave just as soon as you got on your feet, but that was taking so long... and I kept staying a little longer and a little longer until we worked out a rut. Then we got Conjectural Technologies off the ground, kinda, and I guess I figured I might as well stick around to help... I just kept putting it off and putting it off."

"I never wanted you to leave, though."

"Yeah, but you didn't know what I did to you."

"And now I do."

"So that's why I'm leaving."

"But I don't _want_ you to."

Pete looked up at him. "Okay, but why?"

Billy threw his hands up in frustration. "I don't know! Because you're my friend! Because I'm used to having you around! Because..." Billy trailed off and lowered his hands slowly. Then he gave a frustrated sigh. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure."

Billy climbed up onto the other side of the couch. "Well, today I remembered the whole quiz show scandal, the underground quiz circuit, the OSI, and that connected to my first memory of this trailer... and then I realized something." Billy looked up. "I've never seen you burned like that again. Not once in almost twenty years. And I'd like to know why."

Pete looked away uncomfortably.

"Tell me why before you leave."

Pete let out some air. "Because I was waiting for you. I don't know, I was out of my mind at that time. I just thought... If I stayed by the billboard, where you could see me..." Pete trailed off. It sounded stupid when he said it out loud, but it had made so much sense back then.

Billy nodded slowly. "Huh."

"Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Yeah, it is."

"So why don't you want me to leave?"

"Well, _that's_ why."

"Huh? I'm not following..."

Billy shook his head. "Forget it." He got off the couch. "I'm going outside to clear my head. Get yourself unpacked, okay?"

"So... are we okay?"

"Noooo, no no no _no._ Not by a long shot" Billy paused. "But we will be. Eventually." He closed the trailer door behind him.

Pete sank back into the couch. Eventually. Well, that was something at least.

* * *

 _I don't know if this is good or not, or if it actually works with the show. Alls I knows is, I wrote it, and I likes it, and I hope ya did, too._


End file.
